A storm is brewing in San Diego. No, not a storm, a wave. A big wave. A big wave is building in San Diego, threatening to crash down on the shore of the seventh largest city in the US. The big wave will wipe out the inbred culture of complacency that has corrupted the city and earned it the nickname Enron-on-Sea.

And riding atop the wave is a politician unlike the others: she's a girl, she's blonde, she tells it straight, she is Surfer Chick.

"Ha ha ha." Surfer Chick emits a throaty laugh in her office in San Diego's city hall. "Sometimes I wonder myself how it got to this. I didn't want to be an elected official. I wanted to be a ballerina."

Now it may be too late for Surfer Chick - aka councilwoman Donna Frye - to return to the water. Six weeks after the election, and just over a week after the incumbent, Dick Murphy, was sworn in for a second term as mayor, the result seems more uncertain than ever.

Frye entered the election just five weeks before the vote, too late for her name to appear on the printed ballot. To get around this, voters are allowed to write the name of a candidate into a blank space on the ballot. They also have to fill in a circle next to the name which enables the electronic scanner to register a vote.

When the final tally of the votes was made, Frye came second, just 2,108 votes behind Murphy. This in itself represented some kind of revolution in San Diego politics.

But this week things became even more scrappy. A study of the ballots sponsored by a lawyer supporting Frye and several news organisations found that 5,547 ballots with Frye's name written in had been disqualified because the voter had not darkened the circle. If those votes were counted, the mayor would have to stand down and Frye would be sworn in as the rightful winner, by 3,439 votes. But Murphy is refusing to budge.

Court cases loom as Frye decides whether to pursue her vanished votes. The lawyer who sponsored the recount, Fred Woocher, explained to the Los Angeles Times: "The issue is, do we live in a country where people are going to lose their right to vote when the intention is quite clear but the rules are not?"

So compelling is this story of the political outsider who came from nowhere to challenge the established elites that the big news networks have already come calling. The story has even attracted Hollywood, always on the lookout for the next Erin Brockovich.

"We've received a call about a movie or something like that," says Frye, sitting in her office. "A surf buddy of mine who also happens to be an attorney is looking into it. It's a good story. It might even pay my legal fees."

Frye's looks have had profile writers striving to outdo each other: one paper rhapsodised that her blond hair cascaded while her blue eyes twinkled. In truth, Surfer Chick is a tall, distinguished-looking 52-year-old with, yes, long blond hair and, yes, blue eyes.

She also has that rangy quality you find in people who are more accustomed to being outdoors than confined in office suites. Her sensible office gear doesn't look quite right either. Although the pink jacket, paisley skirt and ruched white shirt are probably what the plausible San Diego politician should wear, Frye gives the impression that she is inhabiting someone else's clothes.

But beneath the image she shares attributes common in successful politicians: she knows what she wants and god forbid anyone who should stand in her way.

"I don't do things just to get a message out," she says. "I do things to win."

Frye got into politics 10 years ago when she started STOP - Surfers Tired of Pollution. Frye used to run a surf shop with her legendary surfer dude husband Skip Frye. "He was so smooth," she sighs, as she shows me a picture of Skip skateboarding long before it was fashionable. But then he got ill and she believed that the cause was pollution dumped into the sea by the city's storm drains.

So Frye made her own investigations and started going to council meetings. That and her election to the council in 2001 brought home to Frye what she sees as the closed complacency of government.

"There's no passion," she says, "there's no desire to understand what a public servant is supposed to be." This might all just be yet more political piffle, but with Frye there is a sense that she is the real thing, that she means it and has no inkling of how to duck the issues she raises.

Frye is an unusual person. Dogged and well-grounded - she lives with her mother as well as her husband - she is also inspirational. Surely the good old boys will never let her win this election.

"I already won," she says with a smile. "I don't mean I won as the mayor, and I don't mean to sound arrogant. We got more people participating in the mayoral election. People are hopeful, they're optimistic. No matter if I become the next mayor and represent the city, I won. I'm not going gently into that good night."

There is one final irony in this tale of Surfer Chick versus the Good Old Boys. The boys got a measure passed on the election ballot authorising greater powers for the mayor. They never imagined that those powers might fall to anyone other than their chosen candidate.

One of the few public voices to oppose the measure was councilwoman Donna Frye.

About this article

Riding the crest of a wave

This article was published on
the Guardian website
at 04.26 EST on Friday 17 December 2004.
It was last modified at 06.23 EDT on Saturday 4 October 2014.
It was first published at 04.26 EST on Tuesday 21 December 2004.